When discussing Nietzsche and ressentiment, those who want to save Nietzsche often make the point that ressentiment is a key part of the idea of justice. In response, I would like to tell a story about The Good King.
There once was a good king. One day, a man came to him and said that ever since he had plugged up a river, his fields were producing a huge amount of crop and it had made him very rich, and he wished to give the king a gift so that the king might remember him. The next day, a different man came to the king and said that the river near to his house had recently stopped flowing and that ever since, his crops had failed and his family were starving close to death. The king found out where the first man lived and they discovered that the river which the first man had plugged was also the river that the second man had relied upon. Therefore the king gave the first man’s gift to the second man and he sent people to unblock the river.
I hope we can agree that justice was done in this scenario. Where is ressentiment? You might want to find it in the second man, but he hasn’t come to the king experiencing ressentiment; that comes out of interpersonal reactions. He would need to be resentful of the first man, but he does not know the first man. Do we now need to posit ideas like “potential ressentiment“? No, I think that’s being a bit silly.
If you want, you can take the king out. Do neighbors not help one another? If a change happens like that, one person gets their neighbor to reverse a change that was unknowingly made, why must we assume that ressentiment was involved? Even if the issue was long-standing, it may not be an issue of ressentiment. I am not saying that ressentiment/resentment never play a role, but for this concept to be valid, it needs to be a driving force of this process. The contention is not simply that ressentiment exists but that it is the basis for an entire type of morality, one with specific ideas about justice & vengeance. If we can construct a justice that does not involve ressentiment, why should we assume that ressentiment is ever a necessary component? And if ressentiment is not a necessary component of justice, why should we believe that there is any basis to the idea that ressentiment causes a wholly new type of valuation called slave morality?
Leave a Reply